Monday, January 29, 2007

Pete Alexander

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Not much of that thread was about Alexander - he was just too good to need much discussion. It would have been interesting to rig the eligibility timeline to force us to choose between Alexander and Mathewson - I think that vote would have been overwhelmingly for Alexander.

Not much of that thread was about Alexander - he was just too good to need much discussion.

Yeah, that's true. If I had posted this thread back then, it would have been filled with posts about The Winning Team, epilepsy, the Lazzeri strikeout, shell shock, alcoholism and the House of David, but there would have been no need for any serious analytical work.

It would have been interesting to rig the eligibility timeline to force us to choose between Alexander and Mathewson - I think that vote would have been overwhelmingly for Alexander.

That would also have spurred on analysis of both pitchers and their eras, so that would have squeezed out the anecdotes somewhat.

Yeah, that's true. If I had posted this thread back then, it would have been filled with posts about The Winning Team, epilepsy, the Lazzeri strikeout, shell shock, alcoholism and the House of David, but there would have been no need for any serious analytical work.

Let's see, the way things tend to work around here....

The Winning Team would lead to arguments for and against Reaganomics, the Invasion of Grenada (which might also spur discussion of the Invasion of Panama), and then ultimately into whether Sen. John Tower's death was suspicious or not.

Epilepsy would after twists and turns lead to Jim Eisenreich and Jimmy Piersall, with a possible mention of Pete Harnisch.

The Lazzeri strikeout would lead someone to ask, What are the important Ks in history?

Shell shock would die on the vine, not enough to go on, but it could lead to talk of Hemingway's short stories or to Curtis Pride.

Alcholism has so many possible tangents it's hard to pin down, but surely Paul Waner and Hack Wilson would make an appearance; ultimately this leads someone to ask, Well, how is this really different than Cocaine in the 1970s and 1980s? Or alternatively an exploration of prohibition on baseball as a business, as well as on how ballplayers coped with it.

House of David wouldn't start very quickly, but someone would later post a photo of Alex among all the long-haired players, and then quickly it would be into ballplayer grooming versus the standards of the day, with Dave Duncan, Al Hrabosky, Eck, Jimmy Wynn, Oscar Gamble, and Johnny Unitas (via the Simpsons) all making likely appearances.

In fact, it's equally likely that none of these would occur, and instead we'd be purusing something totally unrelated to the player (see threads for C. Cooper and Guidry). So we might guess that instead we'd be talking about something like, oh i dunno, how players traveled then versus today and what kinds of accomodations they had; how awful the Phillies were until 1950; whether Hippo Vaughn's career would have been salvaged by modern medicine; whether the 1920s featured the least ept or at least the least interesting group of Presidents in the modern era; how the post-ww1 rise in runs scored in baseball was reflective of the national mood and national economic picture, and whether there is any general historical relationship between baseball and the national economy/mood.

Alex 3 40s, 2 30s, 8 20s, 5 10s--ahead by just 3 WS after best 13 years, but clearly ahead for 3-5 year peak.
Matty 0 40s, 9 30s, 3 20s, 1 10--ahead 9 to 5 on 30s and 40s, so for prime it's pretty much a dead heat.

OTOH this ignores Pete's 1918 season spent in war work as well as the short 1919 season. I would add in 34 WS for 1918 and boost 1919 from 26 to 28. This pushes Pete ahead on prime as well, unless you want to give Matty some sort of hard-luck health credit.

Was Alex really better for their 3-4-5 year peaks? The assumption has to be that it was harder to throw all those innings in the '10s than in the '00s because, no, the raw numbers aren't any better. Or WS just bumped up against diminishing returns for Matty, whose Giants were 200 games over .500 those 5 years, an average of about 97-57. Alex' Phillies and Cubs were +87 or about 88-66 for his 4 big years, though the Phillies were +91 for the 3 years or about 92-62.

All in all, I would take Alex but James ratings--Alex 3rd all-time and Matty 7th--would seem to exaggerate the difference a bit. The fact that he's got Spahn and Seaver in between there, of course, says nothing about Matty or Alex, it says that James' timeline is strong. Matty seems to me to go ahead of those 2 and then, voila, you've only got Cy Young between there. James says "I focused on big seasons and consistent performance over a five-year period." Being consistently excellent for 13 years, as Matty was, didn't count for as much, I guess.

I think James said something about there being too many players from more or less the same era at the top of the pitchers chart - Young, Mathewson, Johnson and Alexander, so he felt the need to knock Matty down a little bit. That may have been in his discussion of the top 100 overall, and I don't have my NHBA at work, so I might not be accurate.

So I get Alexander with the single best year and with a small advantage in top-5 years (not consecutive), Mathewson with an advantage in years 6-10, giving him a slight advantage in top-10 years - then after 10 years, (actually, after 11 years) it's all Alexander, giving Alexander a sizable career advantage.

All in all, this looks quite similar to the picture sunnyday2 was painting in #12. And that equivalent 120-84 I get for Alexander after subtracting out his best 10 years? It's worse than the whole career of Dizzy Dean (136-82) but better than the whole career of Denny McLain (112-98). It's pretty close to what this system gives for Goose Gossage (not that the system should be applied to relievers) and it's pretty close to the major league career of Sal Maglie (117-75). And yes, if I took away the best 10 years from Cy Young or Walter Johnson and took the leftovers, they'd be even more impressive.

<small>*Someone with a classy wife, like Dr C, must know the correct term.</small>

Turns out Mrs. Dr. Chaleeko isn't much for the fussy fusses of formal wear, however, she informs me, nonetheless, of two possible ways to fill in this analogy:

coattails : menswear :: ______ : womenswear

1) train (which is the immediately obvious one)
2) petticoat (which she said would suggest an analogous degree of archaism since coattails are seldom worn anymore---yet, ironically, still often ridden)